Experienced team hopes to fill
gap in market.
Close Motor Finance (CMF) has entered
the Irish market via First Auto Finance (FAF), a new joint venture
to act as its exclusive agent in the Republic.
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The venture is a subsidiary of
Irish financial services business Finance Ireland (FI) and has been
established with a management team including some of the leading
lights of the Irish motor finance industry.
FI’s chairman Billy Kane was
formerly responsible for developing motor lending at Permanent TSB,
currently Ireland’s leading car finance provider. He was also a
founding director of Woodchester Investments, the business which
became Ireland’s largest independent finance company before being
acquired by GE capital in 1997.
FAF’s managing director Frank
Donnellan is also an alumnus of Woodchester, having grown the
company’s market share in car finance to 30% during his tenure as
national sales director.
Donnellan established Friends First
Finance’s (FFF) auto-lending division in 2000, before moving to
Bank of Scotland (Ireland) (BOSI) in 2002 as joint managing
director. While in this role, BOSI grew to become one of the
market’s top three players.
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By GlobalDataAlso hired at FAF are Michael
Sheehy, former chief operations officer at Permanent TSB, and Frank
Cronin, who has occupied sales leadership roles at FFF and GE
Capital Woodchester.
The calibre of the team suggests
that CMF aims to build its business quickly in Ireland, where the
car credit market has been starved in recent years by the departure
of GE, FFF, Lombard Ireland and BOSI.
Manufacturers too have begun to
react to this credit vacuum, with last month seeing Renault lender
RCI Banque as the latest captive funder to announce its entrance to
the Irish market.
Donnellan said: “With few major
players left in the market, the limited availability of credit to
purchase vehicles in the Republic of Ireland has been widely
publicised. Together we are seeking to address this shortfall.”
CMF managing director James Broadhead added that he was
confident the “experience and track record” of the new team would
“establish Close Motor Finance as a serious player in the
Republic”.
